The South African Civil Society Information Service
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
A nonprofit news agency promoting social justice. Seeking answers to the question:
How do we make democracy work for the poor?
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Oxford University Professor, Danny Dorling, unpacks the latest research into how the lives and ideas of the 1% impact the remaining 99% in the UK. He says there’s a new cleavage opening up. The 1% used to have a more diverse group of professions, but increasingly it is concentrated in the financial sector. Britain’s 2,200 bankers earn over a million euros annually. In comparison Swiss bankers earn only half as much. A consequence of this growing division is that the UK now has...
Sandile Tshabalala -
Twenty years since the dawn of our democracy, many South Africans remain marginalized and unable to reach their full potential due to a series of obstacles. Our constitutional democracy gives equal rights to all citizens. However, inequality remains a challenge. Poverty, crime and xenophobia haunt our society on a daily basis. In the midst of a legal order that affords equal rights to all, the lived experience of ordinary South Africans is of critical concern. Their access to justice is...
Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen -
Presidents’ relish shorthand descriptions of the agenda they are implementing. In Jacob Zuma’s first term of office, the term “faster change” played that role. Bureaucrats and politicians quickly took up this term not merely to demonstrate loyalty to a newly installed President, but also because many in public service valued a commitment to accelerating change. The term however faded from usage, buried in inaccessible policies and procedures, and the absence of a...
Millennials are broadly defined as people born after 1980. Paul Taylor of the Pew Research Centre outlines a few distinguishing characteristics of the Millennial generation based on research done in the U.S.
1) Millennials are the most non-white generation (at least insofar as research in the U.S. demonstrates).
2) They are very liberal in their social and cultural values.
3) Millennials are not attached to the idea of marriage.
4) Many Millennials are not religious.
5)...
Richard Pithouse -
From our increasingly riotous streets to our ever more fractious parliament, it is undeniably clear that South Africa is not a country at ease with itself. And, as the language of those who come out to defend Jacob Zuma and what has become of the ANC grows more hysterical and sets itself against imagined ‘agents’, ‘criminals’, ‘Satanists’ and ‘Nazis’, the weakness and panic at the heart of the Zuma project becomes increasingly evident. What were...
Gerard Boyce -
In a story that has dominated headlines worldwide over the past few months, Scots were recently asked to decide whether Scotland should become an independent country or remain part of the United Kingdom. They chose to retain the status quo in what was ultimately a very close poll. Regardless of one’s opinion on the outcome thereof, this referendum exemplifies the type of situations, viz. when leaders seek a mandate to pursue major political changes, which will alter the nation’s...
